Prince of Persia®: The Sands of Time

The original Apple 2 source code for Prince of Persia (1989) has been found by Jordan Mechner's father during a spot of spring cleaning.

A chuffed Jordan Mechner will now try to convert the archaic disks into a readable format for today's computers. And then he'll share what he can of the original Prince of Persia code on his website.

"My dad called from New York to tell me he was doing some spring cleaning and had shipped me a carton of old games and other stuff of mine he'd found in the back of a closet," Jordan Mechner wrote. "The carton arrived yesterday. My jaw dropped when I saw what was inside.

Apple 2 source code for the original, 1989 Prince of Persia.

"No, I don't mean the stacks of Spanish Drosoft versions of POP and Karateka," he added, referencing the picture. "I mean those three little plastic 3.5" disk boxes nestled among them, which appear to contain the original Apple 2 source doe of Prince of Persia that I've been searching for, off and on, for the past 10 years, pestering everyone from Doug Carlston to Danny Gorlin and everyone who ever worked at Broderbund, and finally gave up hope of ever finding [it].

"I knew it wasn't like me to throw stuff out!"

The original, Apple 2 Prince of Persia game was released in 1989. It was ported wide and far. But it wasn't until 2003, and Mechner's Ubisoft collaboration on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, that the brand gained the status it enjoys today.

The full study must be bought for $30. One amusing excerpt reported on The Metro website describe a 15 year-old boy wanting to use a gravity gun from Half-Life 2 to fetch something from the fridge. And why not?

One 19-year-old Price of Persia: Sands of Time enthusiast dropped his sandwich and immediately his finger used to press the rewind-time button twitched. A natural response.

Another 19-year-old thought he could use World of Warcraft's search function to locate his brother in a crowd. What a good idea.

Apparently half of the gamers interviewed said they'd looked for something from a video game to solve a real-life issue. One interviewee apparently saw a menu of topics available for him to think about (Heavy Rain?); another formulated a list of possible responses after being insulted (Mass Effect 2?).

Of course, there is a darker side to all of this. Use of aggressive, criminal and/or violent fantasies as solutions to real-life problems were reported by "a few" of the players.

The Daily Mail focused on one particular 15-year-old who said that "sometimes" he wants to be able to get a gun and "shoot down" people. "Irritating people", mind you.